Savage (Daughters of the Jaguar) (19 page)

“Did he now?”

“Yes. I promised to stop by tomorrow actually. Just with a few books and stuff for you to start with. It’ll be fun,” he said and gave me a push with his elbow.

I smiled and nodded. And so it begins, I thought.

“So, are you going in with me?” he asked. He took out his rifle. Seeing him with it made me suddenly remember the vision I had had about him killing my jaguar. Had that been a premonition too? Was he really going to kill it? My heart was racing. Why hadn’t I thought about that before? Of course that was some sort of warning, too.

“No. You know this stuff isn’t for me. You know me. I couldn’t kill it when I was face to face with it, so …I’ll just be off.”

Jim let out a blunt laugh. “Don’t be sad about it. Some people just don’t have it in them. You need to be a killer. You need to be fearless.” Then he laughed again while pushing me with the end of the rifle. He put his bag over his shoulder and picked up all of his stuff. “Nice article in the paper today, by the way,” he said before disappearing into the darkness of the swamps.

Chapter 22

I ran as fast as I had ever done through the waters of the river. I fell and got up and fell again. I just had to get to the jaguar before Jim did. I was sweating, hyperventilating. What if I was too late? I had seen him shoot it in my vision. Was that about to come true? It had rained that afternoon, a big thunderstorm that had only lasted about an hour but had filled the river and made it even harder on me to walk in. I wasn’t as careful as I should have been given my earlier experience in that river. I don’t think I thought about the possibility of having another encounter with alligators. I had only one thing in mind and that was getting to see my jaguar even if it was for the last time. I had brought my camera and had put it in my backpack that I was holding over my head while fighting my way through the deep water. As I came closer to the clearing, I threw my backpack on the trail and crawled on shore again. I had come to love the warm Florida nights, so hot that I had no problem keeping warm even in my wet clothes.

I started running towards the clearing, and as I got there I realized I was alone. There were no hunters, no Jim in sight. Maybe our secret spot was still just that. A secret.

I put my backpack on the ground and found the camera. I didn’t bring any meat for the jaguar to eat but hoped that it would come to me anyway. All I had was a pack of crackers and a half-eaten sandwich with ham and cheese. I put it out on the ground just to have something, maybe it would think that it was meat and come close anyway.

I waited for almost an hour, and by then I was ready to give up. The jaguar had probably realized that I had stopped coming and was busy hunting in the swamps. I exhaled deeply as I stood up looking around in the clearing, searching through the trees and bushes, hoping to see those yellow glowing eyes again. But there was nothing. I put my food back in the backpack and started walking when I heard a sound coming from the river. I went down to the bank. There it was. I couldn’t stop smiling. That was definitely my jaguar with its tawny fur with black rosettes on the back. It was standing on a trunk that had fallen and was halfway in the river. It was looking in the water, standing completely still and motionless, not making a sound. I took my camera and threw the backpack on the ground. While hiding behind the thin trees and bushes I started taking pictures. In the moonlight I could see what it had spotted in the water. It was an alligator, about eight feet long. My heart skipped a beat. It had to have been in the water when I was walking there to get to the clearing. I swallowed hard thinking of the last time when I had been dragged underwater. I had to be more careful. I zoomed in on the jaguar’s face trying to capture its concentration and focus. This could easily be a whole series of photos of the hunting jaguar, I thought.

The jaguar crouched on the trunk putting its face closer to the water. The alligator wasn’t intimidated by the jaguar’s move. It seemed like they were looking at each other, waiting to see who would make the first move. Did the one who made the first move have the advantage or was that a weakness that might expose it and make it easier for the other to go for the kill? My palms were sweating and I dried them off on my clothes. My hair was soaked. Then the jaguar climbed closer to the water and put its paw to the surface. I was so lucky that it was once again full moon so I could capture this amazing spectacle of nature. I was amazed at how bright the moon shone in these parts. It was almost like daylight and cast a shadow of my body on the ground. The jaguar walked a little back and forward again, putting its paw into the water like it was reaching out for the alligator or maybe trying to intimidate it. It worked. The alligator slowly backed up in the water. The water was shallow in these parts so I could see most of its face and tail as it moved through the water. I kept taking pictures and moved even a little closer to get better close-ups. Then something happened that took me completely by surprise. The jaguar crouched again and then it leaped through the air and into the water. I pressed the button on my camera and took a whole series of pictures as it landed in the water and started running towards the alligator. In one quick move it attacked it and bit through its skull. The alligator fought for its life for a few seconds and moved violently in the water, causing it to splash water into the air while the jaguar calmly and superiorly held it between its sharp teeth until it became motionless. I jumped out of my hiding spot and onto the trunk and took all the pictures I could get of the fierce animal holding the alligator in its mouth. It was a sublime sight, a beautiful display of the rawness of nature.

Through the lens I realized that the jaguar, still holding the alligator in its mouth, was now staring directly at me.  I took five or six extra pictures of the predator and its prey, then I lowered the camera and stared back at it. Its glowing yellow eyes felt piercing. Everything around us went quiet, it seemed. I could only hear my breath and heart rhythm. It was pounding in my chest.

Then the jaguar continued its undertaking. It fought a long time to drag the alligator on shore. Then it started eating, sinking its teeth into the meat of what was once a predator itself. I stayed in a distance knowing that the jaguar might see me as a threat to its feast. I knew that a predator will always protect its prey as a part of its survival skills. The sound of the teeth going through the bones and thick skin was frightening at first but then compelling and thrilling--mesmerizing. As a city boy I was beginning to enjoy and appreciate nature in a whole new way that I had never thought possible.

An hour or so later, the feast was over and the jaguar deserted the remains of the alligator leaving it to other animals. It started walking away from the dead animal and I followed it. It must have known I was there since I wasn’t that good at hiding or not making any noise, but I think that given our history it somehow accepted my presence. It let me follow it like it had earlier let me touch it and feed it by hand. I was exhilarated about this newfound connection with nature and this animal, and for maybe another hour I followed in its steps as it walked the trails of the swamps. I kept looking over my shoulder fearing that we would run into the hunters, or they would somehow find us. Suddenly, the jaguar stopped, as if it had heard something. A noise or maybe even a smell. It stuck its nose in the air and turned to look at me. It had sensed something. I could see it in its eyes. Its glowing eyes stared at me, somehow inviting me to come closer. I walked slowly towards it, humbling myself to not seem frightening or in anyway threatening. As I came closer it seemed to be almost purring, like a housecat. It lowered its head and stretched out its neck. I kneeled in front of it and reached out my hand. It smelled it. I was shivering, but not out of fear, out of excitement. Ecstatic excitement. It smelled my hand and carefully I touched its nose and then the soft part over its eyes. I was holding my breath as I stroked the cat over its back, touching its thick fur and feeling its fine lines. So elegant, so slim, its legs that it put in front of each other like a model on the runway. It was stunning. Not big but surely strong. I could feel the muscles underneath the skin and see them on the back and on the hind legs.

A noise, like a rattle, caused it to freeze again. Its eyes were no longer fixated on me but on the bushes behind me. I withdrew my hand and looked in the direction where the sound had come from. When I turned my head again the jaguar was gone.

The rattling was there again and I got up on my legs. What kind of animal would cause my jaguar to run off like that? It couldn’t be a snake, ‘cause it knew how to deal with that. It could only be one thing.

Humans.

I hurried and put my backpack back on and started walking trying to make enough noise for them to know that I was there and I wasn’t an animal they should shoot.

“Is there anyone there?” I yelled.

One second later, Jim and his hunting buddies stepped out from the bushes. I was sweating heavily. How long had they been in there? Had they seen me with the jaguar? 

“Chris?” Jim said and stepped closer. He was surprised to see me. That was a good sign. Then they couldn’t have been observing me with the jaguar.

“That’s me.” I forced a big smile. I needed to stall them so the jaguar could get away.

“What are you doing here?” Jim asked.

“Just trying to see if I could track down the beast on my own,” I said.

“I thought you wanted us to stop hunting for it. How did you put it? ‘It is harmless’?” said Jim.

I sighed. “Well, I still think it is,” I said. “I still believe that it helped me that night. I know it saved my life. I don’t see any reason to kill it.”

Jim snorted. “Well it didn’t exactly help me out when I met it,” he said. “Besides. It is a very dangerous animal to have on the loose. It doesn’t matter that it didn’t hurt you even if it wanted to. It is still dangerous. I have also been close to it and I can tell you it wanted to kill me.”

“But it didn’t,” I mumbled.

“Not this time. But what about next time? What about when it gets really hungry and stumbles upon a kid playing by the picnic tables? Now step aside. I believe we are close to it now. I can almost smell it. It’s the stench of evil.”

Chapter 23

I went home trusting that the jaguar was able to escape the hunters now that it knew they were there, now that it had picked up their scent. I was still afraid for it, though, as I entered my room and picked up the typewriter Mrs. Kirk had given me. Still upset and angry with Jim and his friends, I started writing my next article for the newspaper. With the night’s events in mind, I wrote about how the jaguar was a useful predator since it helped kill dangerous alligators that constantly lurked in the waters of the Twelve Mile Swamps. With the pictures in mind, I wrote how the jaguar attacked, how it sneaked up upon the animal in the water and just sank its teeth into it. I wrote about my own experience with the alligators, that they were, in fact, the dangerous ones, since they were the ones that had pulled me under water, they were the ones that had bitten my leg and arm and left scars on me to always remember what they had done. I wrote how I believed that the jaguar had saved me purposely and dragged me to the shore to save me. Then I did something bold and wrote about my later encounters with the jaguar in the swamps. How I had searched for it and brought meat to win its trust and friendship, about how it had let me touch it and pet it and had even eaten out of my hand. I even wrote that it had slowly become my friend, that killing it would hurt me, since I was forever indebted to this creature. I owed it everything. This was a magnificent animal that we should be proud to have, and incarcerating it in the local zoo wouldn’t be a solution since it would be a fate worse than death for a proud animal like this.

I was exhausted once I was done. The sun had begun to rise, and I went to the kitchen to grab a glass of water before I would go to bed. As I stood by the sink and watched how our road slowly became alit and put the darkness behind it, I suddenly saw something that made my heart stop. It went by my window so fast, I wasn’t sure I hadn’t been dreaming afterwards, or seeing more images, but I was pretty sure I saw my jaguar. It was running like the wind. It went faster than I had ever seen it do.

I dropped my glass in the sink and ran outside only to realize it was gone. I walked up and down the street and around the house but there was no trace of it. Not even a paw print. Had it followed me home? Or was I again imagining things? Was it another vision? I kind of hoped it was just me being really tired and seeing things, because I knew if it was seen running through neighborhoods it wouldn’t be long before someone shot it or they captured it and put it in the zoo. It was damn hard to defend an animal that was running around in people’s backyards and scaring them.

I exhaled heavily and decided it was time for bed.

I slept until noon and then I tumbled out of bed with my article in my hand, put it in an envelope and then in the mailbox. I had put the negatives along with it, so now there was nothing to do but wait and see if they liked it and wanted to print it. I had my fingers crossed as I walked back into the house. I spotted Halona sitting on a swing in their yard. The swing next to her was swaying noticeably. It made me laugh. I waved to her. She smiled and waved back. Then I went back inside the house and dozed off again for a couple of hours, dreaming about Aiyana.